ETERNITY
by pandasize
Summary: A one-shot Garrus and Commander Shepard fic. Post-Reaper War. Garrus and Shepard reunite, but Garrus is still trying to reconcile the guilt and truama of the final battle.


The rich blue sea is littered with fiery coals, refractions of the setting sun ablaze against an unmovable horizon. Garrus is bleary-eyed when he first wakes from the sand, feeling the grains crumble away from his hide, still hot from the sun. He turns to face his mate, but an indentation is all she has left behind.

Disappointment grates the lining of his stomach, but he wills it away. If he allows it to stay, he knows what comes next — the memories and then the guilt. _A waste of time and energy_, he reasons with himself.

Dusting off his truncated pair of blue civvies, he climbs up the golden coast. Without armor he moves much faster. And for once, he revels in the absence of needing to wear any at all. No, not in this tropical paradise. Not after the Reaper War.

He reaches the hut in no time. It's small in comparison to what they could have purchased with their profits from the vids, but they've never needed much space. Her captain's cabin had been their place of solace for years. And this was at least four times as large.

It was perfect.

_She_ was perfect. From behind, Shepard's athletic frame has softened at the edges. She sways lightly beneath her seafoam colored dress, and the sheerness of the fabric allows him to see the curvature of her every movement and the outlines of the white…._bikini_, he believe she called it, underneath. He neither understood the function or purpose of the bikini, but he appreciates the way it mirrored the undergarments she wore aboard the Normandy. Undergarments that only he, Garrus Vakarian, had the privilege to see, to touch…to tear away on restless nights when they were nothing but raw nerves…

A swelling at these torrid memories threatened to loosen his plates, and he shifts against the doorway. Shepard's melodic humming pauses briefly, but she doesn't turn around, "Ah, look who's awake in time for dinner." He can hear the smirk in her voice.

"Should have woken me up to help," he offered, wrapping his talons around her waist. He loved how small she felt in his hands. "Roasted louza and sradis root?"

"Yes, your favorite," she reaches back and pats him lovingly along his scarred mandible. "And I can prepare turian cuisine by myself these days. I'm not as hopeless as you think. I did save the galaxy once, you know."

"Never knew that was relevant to cooking dextro," he teased gently, pulling her back against him. "But I like seeing you this way…"

"All domestic?" Her emerald eyes drift closed, body lax against his. "That's what love does. Turns a girl like me into a housewife with the culinary skills to prove it. But don't get me wrong, Garrus. I can still take you out if you test me."

He doesn't hear her chuckle because a memory hits him like a concussive shot.

_That's what love does. Turns a guy like me into a nervous wreck with something to lose with the aim to make sure he doesn't._

He said that to her once, but then he did…he _did_ lose her.

_They're running, running through the battlefield, but the sky is hailing limp bodies and hard machinery. Gut-wrenching screams are drowned by the world exploding all around them. He was supposed to watch her six, but he doesn't make it past a few hundred meters before the ash is too thick. A searing pain scorches through his leg when he dodges too slow, and metal debris crushes his leg. Vega carries him on his shoulder as if he were a cripple. He is forced to watch the love of his life head towards the beginning of the end. **Alone.**_

It is a pain he can not describe with words. A pain that is only surpassed by the paralyzing ache that developed during the subsequent months — trapped on a nameless tropical island, unable to search for her, unable to know if she was still alive.

Everyone worked tirelessly— trying to get the Normandy up and running, trying to establish an outside connection for a rescue team. But despite all the tasks at hand, unbearable guilt, frustration, and sadness petrified like an angry boulder in the pit of his stomach. How many nights had he spent in her cabin, inhaling her fading scent off the pillows? How many hours spent wondering where she was? Blaming himself for not making it to the end with her?

It was a heaviness that he simply could not lose even after she was found. It lingered in his veins. _I failed to protect her. Spirits, she nearly died…_

"Garrus?" Shepard's hand delicately cradled the scarred side of his face, interrupting his thoughts. "What's wrong?"

He shook his head, eyes closed, and brow plates furrowed.

"Garrus, look at me. Please?" her voice was richly soothing and so he swallows his pride.

Green met blue and with one wordless look, she knew. She always did. "Oh darling…" she breathed softly. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean—"

"No, I'm sorry," a flanging hum broke out of him and cracked mid-sentence. "I left you alone. I shouldn't have—"

"Shhh…no….it wasn't your fault. I'm here now. _Safe._" She pressed her forehead to his reassuringly. "Leave the past where it is."

He could only answer with a whispy, dual-toned exhale. The memories haunted him, and he couldn't explain why, but soft, supple lips interrupted his thoughts when she kissed him. Chaste pecks up his scars at first, and then lightly across his facial tattoos. He closed his eyes, absorbing every touch.

"I love you…." her tongue gently traced the seam of his mouth, encouraging him to let her slide in to console his guilt through touch, massaging away any fears or doubts.

They stood, kissing eagerly and passionately in the balmy air of the kitchen. "Shepard, I…" his heart ached as his plates shifted in response. "I need you…"

"I need you too." Her deft fingers reaffirmed her words with gentle strokes along the sensitive edges of his bare waist plates.

He groaned, unable to wait any longer. Raw need to see her, feel her, and _taste_ her overwhelmed him. He needed to feel her warm, safe, and blissful in his arms. It was something he could not control when the memories hit him this way, but she was always happy to oblige.

And true to fashion, she didn't protest when he got to his knees, pulling her dress over her hips and dragging her bikini bottoms off on his way down. She didn't argue when he spread her legs and nuzzled her inner thighs with a loving frevor. Chafing be damned, he knew she needed this as much as he did.

His long blue tongue languidly laps along her pink slit, relishing the silken lips, her arousing scent, and the slick nectar steadily seeping out of her cunt. He loves the way she bucks, when he tastes her swollen, fleshy pearl; her knuckles white as she grips the side of the kitchen counter.

Still too proud to slide onto the kitchen tiles in a wanton heap, he hums amused into her mound as she tries to remain standing while he mercilessly tongue fucks her eager pussy. "You've been swimming," he pants between licks. "You taste of brine and sun. Salty…"

"Oh jesus, Garrus…" She looks away, knees shaking, long russet locks falling over her eyes. Commander Shepard, savior of the galaxy, krogan battlemaster, first human spectre….can face a thresher maw, but not her turian lover when he lovingly describes her cunt. He loves this.

"You're wet like the sea too," he relishes her reactionary squirm before he carefully places a talon inside her. "Listen."

He jiggles his digit up and down, making the most obscene noise possible. He makes sure she can hear her arousal, and flicks his tongue from side to side rapidly against her folds — emphasizing every slip and slurp.

"Damn it! Aaaah!" She huffs and struggles, but he settles her jerking hips with his other hand.

"Do you hear that, Shepard?" his subharmonics quaver, watching her lose control always chipped away at his own.

She could only nod, unable to stop her whimpering.

"Shepard, look at me…"

She doesn't.

"Look at me, or I'll stop," he lowers his voice to a the dual-toned rumbling for insurance.

It does the trick.

Slowly, she meets his gaze. Emerald eyes hold a glimmer of pride and defiance, but her flushed red cheeks and quaking thighs say she's ready to beg.

"Tell me what you want, Shepard."

"Garrus, pl-please…."

"Please what?" His talon crooks against that rough patch deep inside her walls and feels her inner muscles clench in response. The vice-like grip around his digit makes him wish it were his aching cock instead.

"Please…let me cum…"

"That's my girl," he hums satisfied. Ice blue eyes hold steady on hazy green as he begins to devour her all over again. Her knees wobble and knock against the side of his face, but it only encourages him to eat her out more ruthlessly, until—

"Oooh fuck!" her voice cracks hoarse from moaning, and he thinks she sounds most beautiful this way. Slickened muscles spasm around his tongue and he licks a powerful orgasm out of her, hoisting both legs over his shoulders when she finally slips. He slides her back on top of the counter until she's laying flat against it, bottom hanging off, legs over his shoulders, as he continues to feast on her quivering fruit. "Garrus…yes…oh please!" she repeats his name semi-sighs and whines, and his cock throbs almost painfully in response.

Already the deepest shade of blue and glistening with self-lubrication, he knows its selfish when he sees her barely able to catch her breath, but he carries her off into the bedroom anyway. His bones ache with want. And he can only react, tangling them both on the cotton-thin sheets, a mandible gets caught in her long locks, now well past her shoulders, and he wonders how long its been since they retired.

She has more freckles too now, scattered like constellations across her perfectly sunned shoulders. She is all curves and softness, when he is all angles and rough hide. It shouldn't work in theory, but somehow it's the only way they work. And so he makes love to her beneath the jagged shadows of the palm fronds lining their opened windows. His body moves to tell her what his words cannot. A desperate thrust here, a longing squeeze there, but it takes all of his will to maintain the gentle rhythms against her swollen pussy to let her know how he loves her so, how he will always put her first, and never leave her again.

_Does she understand? Is it enough?_

The aching in his heart intensifies, and his hips begin to tremble. Garrus buries his face into the soft, thin skin of her neck, damp with sweat, and can longer suppress a howl that breaks free from his throat. He feels her arms wrap around his cowl and her breathy pant against his fringe.

"It's okay, Garrus. I'm here n-now. I love you….a-and you'll never be—" she gasps and arches forcefully against him when her orgasm begins too suddenly, walls spasming so hard, it sucks the climax right out of him.

"Oh Spirits, Shepard!" he hisses, cock twitching violently. "I love you too…" Bursts of heavy seed expel out of him with such a force that he grinds his teeth. An invisible weight lifts off of his shoulders, as white hot need paints his vision, and he senses nothing but her warmth encasing every fiber of his being. It is bliss. It is heaven.

And it is only in the afterglow that he realizes how his heart has stopped aching and the new lightness spreading through his limbs. "Shepard?"

Her bee-stung and glossy lips smile contently at him. "You'll never be alone again," she finishes. And she's never looked more beautiful.

"And neither will you," he murmurs against her ear.

"C'mon….let's get cleaned up before dinner gets cold," she tries to sit up, but it is no use. The bed is too soft, and her body still too pliant from their love making.

"No, let's stay here." His mandibles flicker in pure contentment. He feels years younger already. "For all of eternity."

—-

"How's Scars doing?" Vega asks cautiously when Joker exits the battery, doors closing rapidly behind him. "He hasn't come out in a while…"

Joker's face was solemn. It had been ever since EDI shut down. "Get Dr. Chakwas," he ordered with a shake of his head. "We're going to need the routine exam before the burial."

Vega's shoulders slacken with immeasurable grief. "The burial…" he repeats only half-conscious as Joker's figure disappears into the elevator.

"We knew this was coming," Cortez's voice falters, trying to comfort Vega….trying to comfort himself. "We're crashed and stranded on an isolated, non-dextro friendly planet with a limited supply of rations. Garrus had barely been eating as it was, but it could only be so long before—"

"I wish Lola was here," Vega interrupted. "She would have gotten us off this fucked up planet."

"Well, she's not here," Liara made her presence known. "She sacrificed herself for this galaxy…._for us_. And the last thing Commander Shepard would want is for us to give up on our ourselves. We've still got most of this crew. We're going to make it out." The authority on her voice was strained, but it needed to be said.

Cortez nodded in agreement. "There is time for mourning, but we still have to believe in ourselves. Have faith. Commander Shepard, Garrus…we won't let their suffering and sacrifice be for nothing."

"Yeah, I guess we'll find a way, "Vega muttered, turning towards the elevator. "And I guess, they're both in a better place. "


End file.
